A critical review of local and world news. This blog originally commented on the Moncton Times and Transcript but has enlarged its scope.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Dec. 20 something a little different. Well, it's Sunday.

In the morning of
Dec. 21, my building will lose electric power for 12 hours. So it may
not be possible to get a blog out on that day.

I'll begin today
with a note especially for Canadian readers. That's a big piggy, I
know, because three-quarters of the audience for this blog is not
Canadian. But bear with me.

Yesterday, Dickie
Moore died. He was a kid who grew up in my very depressed district of
Montreal. In our end of town, we played hockey in the streets. (And,
of course, with no skates.) Nor could we afford hockey pucks.
Instead, we used the frozen droppings of horses that were still
common on the streets pulling delivery wagons. Dickie Moore grew up
to become one of the greatest hockey players in history. But he was
more than that. In a city divided by language, usually with
bitterness and anger and real danger, Dickie Moore was the one person
admired by all. I shall never forget the day I saw a copy of Le
Journal du Sport with the headline (here translated), Dickie Moore
is better than Maurice Richard!

Dickie played in the
days when pro hockey player salaries were pretty modest. No player
could expect to retire on savings. But Dickie was always a worker.
His father was a furniture mover, and Dickie was expected to pitch in
from an early age. In his hockey-playing days, he bought an ice cream
franchise. He was both the boss and one of the staff. (The big kids,
the ones who all planned to become hockey stars but never made it,
the ones who pretended to be friends of Dickie – but really
disliked him for his success – used to hang out at the ice cream
shop to make fun of him.)

Then, after his
playing days, Dickie kept working as he always had. From scratch, he
built a construction equipment rental business that spread across
Canada, the U.S., and to the middle east.

To top it all off,
he married a girl who had sat in the next row from me in grade seven.
She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. But she never showed
the slightest interest in me. Go figure.

Dickie was a good guy.

The Guardian (US
edition) has what the FBI admits is the best count available of
Americans killed by their own police. As of today, the count is 1095.
That's good, but not good enough. We need 1100 by Christmas. Come on,
now. We can do it. For America.

The count for Canada this year? It's about 20. Perhaps there's a
message in there.

Recently, I had an
e-mail from a nutbar who got my address somewhere. He said he had
absolute proof that Islam teaches its followers to hate Christians
and to kill them. His proof was a list of invasions of European
countries by Muslims over a period of some 1200 years.

It was a short list
and, even at that, I can't imagine how it proved anything about
Islam. In fact, Europe gained intellectually from Islam – and
Christian Europe has invaded Islamic countries (with the blessing of
the Christian churches) are more that Islamics invaded Europe. At
least Europe gained from Islamic occupation. Muslims got nothing but
poverty and death from Christians. For my correspondent to consider
his statement a proven truth is simply bad thinking, really bad
thinking.

And bad thinking is
very widely spread. In the American leadership campaigns, the
candidates can get away with remarkably inane statements and,
sometimes, with just calling each other names. Jeb Bush made
headlines by calling Trump a jerk. What does this have to do with
anything? But reporters excitedly write it down, and reach for their
cell phones. (Bush, by the way, is the accomplice to mass murder
because he's the one that was a major author of Project for the New
American Century, the blueprint for world conquest, and the real
reason for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya and…..)

Canadians are no
better. You can tell that by reading almost any Canadian newspaper or
by watching TV. How could any person who thinks watch dart-throwing
or unspeakably corny wrestling shows is a great way to pass the time?

It's difficult for
public schools to teach thinking because so few parents want their
children to learn how to think. Their idea of school is more often
that it's a place to produce children who conform. University
programmes like history, literature, psychology should teach students
to think. But very, very few university professors have any
understanding of how to teach thinking. And university boards of
governors, the ones who have a powerful control over the
universities, are made up of representatives of very big business.
They want students who have work skills that are useful to big
business, and are trained never to have an original or critical idea
for the rest of their lives.

One can also learn a
good deal about thinking and understanding by reading suitable books,
and by joining groups that steer them to good books, to a broader
range of music, to film.… In my early days of teaching, this was
accomplished with groups that met after school. I was responsible for
current events, film (showing the history of film from the silents to
today, and with film from all over the world. That one normally
attracted 300 or more for every screening.) I also had the debating
club.

Oh – and
weightlifting.

These (well, maybe
not weightlifting) had a notable effect in broadening the outlook of
students, in choosing careers – and in developing the ability to
think and the will to discuss.

School bussing
schedules now make such after-school groups close to impossible. And
I don't see anything filling the gap in New Brunswick.

When I taught
university, I also had a current events group of some 300 that met
in a Jewish library. Judaism has a long history of encouraging
thought and debate. That library was always packed by adults and
students. And it was packed with groups who were there to think and
to broaden their interests. The library director was a brilliant and
tough-minded woman who made sure there were activities to meet the
need.

I thought of that
when I visited the Moncton Library, found it largely empty, and
noticed what seemed to be the only group in it. They were adults –
doing their colouring books.

Judaism takes
learning and books seriously. New Brunswick, with its large,
illiterate population, has the worst or one of the worst funded
library systems in Canada. Hey. We need a new hockey rink.

I worked for the
YMCA for a couple of years – dances, street gangs. I occasionally
organized a discussion group for the gang crowd. But most YMCA
activities were physical. Then I ran a couple of camps for the YMHA.
And it was made very clear to me that along with physical activities
it expected some serious reading, visits to museums and art
galleries, serious discussion.

I have seen almost
no leisure activity in New Brunswick that requires or encourages
thinking. That's why a typical gathering of teenagers means sitting
in a circle, each playing a game on his or her cell phone. Nor have I
seen much that could be called mental or cultural activity in the
churches or any other organization.

No thinking? No
democracy. That's why this province has spent a hundred and fifty
years alternating between two political parties which are in no way
different from each other. That's why it tolerates newspapers that
are designed to encourage ignorance.

In planning a
budget, a government has to start with the needs of a society. Then
it decides its spending priorities. New Brunswick does it the other
way around. That's why we're going to spend a hundred million on a
hockey rink, but fire teachers.

This province needs
more teachers, teachers for children and for adults. It has to revive
schools as places for children and adults to go to, perhaps in the
evening, perhaps as families, to learn to read, to learn what is
worth reading, to learn to think, to discuss. The future of New
Brunswick depends on a thinking and openly discussing population. We
need it for political understanding. We need it for setting
priories. We need it for the creativity and the adaptation that is
lacking.

And it would help if
the churches would offer something more on weekdays than burping.

Follow the American
leadership races. If you think about them, these are frightening.
Except for Bernie Sanders, nobody has any platform but hatred and
fear. This is an election that could well be called insanity. Oil and
the war industries want nothing but more war, more spending, much of
it corrupt, that the country can't afford, more neglect of health
and education, spreading poverty, destabilizing the whole world and,
of course, no taxes for the rich.

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About Me

born into poverty in Montreal. (1933 was a bad year to be born.) Kicked out of school in grade 11. Became factory hand, office boy.
Did a general BA, mostly at night at Sir George Williams University, and partly while a youth worker for YMCA, camps, etc. Then teacher training at McGill.
Taught gradea 7 to 11 for six years. Loved it.
Quit to do MA at Acadia, then PhD (History) at Queen's.
Taught history three years at UPEI, then some 35 years at Concordia U in Montreal.
Loved the teaching. Thought the profs had more pompous and useless asses among then than is really desirable outside a zoo.
work experience:
factory, office,social group work, office,camp director, teacher.
Radio - c. 3000 broadcasts, mostly current events.
TV - many hundred appearances, mostly commentaries.
Film - some writing, advising, voice-overs.
Writing - no count, some hundreds. Some academic, but mostly for popular market, and ranging from short stories to stories to newspaper and magazine columns to history books.
professional speaker - close to 2000.
Awards for the above? yep